


White Snake

by Brighid



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:46:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a snake who became a girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Snake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [victoria_p (musesfool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/gifts).



> This is for Musefool.

Firefly. Legend. Lamp.

 

For Musefool

White Snake

Once, there was a serpent who pretended to be a girl, and in the skin of a girl she fell in love with an honourable man.

She did not mean to fall in love when she slipped into her girl skin. She knew that it was mostly illusion, that she was too big to hold the shape for long, that she would split and spill out, pale and glossy and deadly. But she thought, perhaps, for a little while at least, that it would be fun to pretend. 

Until suddenly she wasn't pretending.

Sometimes she was sure that when he looked at her he saw the slither and slide beneath the surface. That he looked at her and knew her, from the very first time, yet he never looked away; he had his own dark twistings inside. His own flesh fitted him strangely some days. So they bided together, quiet and serious with odd threads of dark whimsy and bright violence, until they became a world to one another.

And so she fell in love with him, despite the thousand reasons he had why she should not. Because in his heart that he claimed not to have he was kind (I'm really, really not, whispered into her neck). Because he was good (I'm a bad, bad man). Because he was hers, always hers, long before they ever found their way to each other's bodies, each other's beds.

Her brother, a darker, sleeker thing than she, he fitted his skin better, so much better that it was as if he'd never been a spirit, wise and distant and almost, almost godlike. He wore his new life well and loved a pretty peach of a girl and learned how to smile for real with his new mouth, how to touch with his new hands. 

The only time she saw him hiss and strike was when she came to him, whispered the small secret that swam a few inches behind her bellybutton. But she was faster, still a halfway thing, and she caught his fury in her small hands, twisted and turned and put her foot to him, told him that maybe, just maybe, she got to be real, too.

A real girl.

)0(

When Inara left, River took over her shuttle, mixing her own small clutter with the two rugs, the lacquered table and the wide, wide bed she'd left behind. Tonight when she walks through, touches each corner, she feels the small world inside her belly, the tidal pull, the soft hum of not-yet thoughts. He, she knows, he. She dims the three oil lamps that are scattered, boils water for tea to serve in paper-thin china cups, bought three worlds ago.

When Mal comes she sits cross-legged at the table, and pours tea for them both. He sits silently, waiting, watching her, knowing but not knowing.

Finally, she says, "I like the name Hoshi Malcolm." Mal drops the cup, but she catches it before the tea is even truly spilled. "You're afraid," she says, gently, and he is, it roils around her like shadow. "So is everyone," she offers, and she touches his hand, crawls around the table, holds his palm to her still-flat belly. "Except him. He just is."

"Kao!" he says, but he doesn't pull away; instead his hand splays protectively over her. Over them. 

"Well, yes. Obviously," River says, and that's when Mal starts laughing.

)0(

She grew warm and sleepy by her third month, her eyes always drifting closed, her belly always hungry. The boy was a blossom, a bud, a small ripening on her otherwise thin body. She slept more than she had since ... since ... 

she had never slept so much.

By the sixth month she was heavy inside, fruiting, sweet. Her small breasts were suddenly a handful, and her narrow pelvis felt as wide as the mouths of great waters. In the darkness she slipped up, astride, rode slowly over his hungering skin. He would curl up to her, touch her breasts with a surprisingly sweet mouth (Bao bai), let his hand drift down to where her need was great, (Ma shang, Ri-oh-River). Later, curled around her, he whispered against the swell of her, soft nonsenses (Hello, nian qing de).

One morning she woke alone, and put on his shirt over a sarong skirt, and wandered down to find breakfast. Fresh air moved through the rooms, and she remembered that there was a whole world outside. She wondered if later she could go out, buy cloth and fresh fruit and raspberry leaf tea. 

She found, instead, her brother in the kitchen, pale and bleeding. 

She found, then, that she was not a so much a girl as a serpent, after all. 

She remembered how to rise up, and how to strike. 

)0(

Mal is broken and gasping on the pallet of the cell where she finds him. She can hear the way his throat's scraped raw, can see the criss-crossing weals of broken flesh across his back. She throws down two blue-gloved hands where he can see them and radios for Simon to come, to hurry.

"Hey, there, bao bai," he whispers, and she crouches down awkwardly, looks into his bloody eye, into the wide-blown pupil.

"They're all dead," she says.

"I figured as much," he says.

"Zoe and Jayne killed a few," she adds, compelled to honesty. 

"Good, good. They need their fun, too. Are you all right? Is ... is ... all right?" he asks as Kaylee helps Simon into the cell, Jayne and Zoe following after with a stretcher. 

"We're just fine," she says and she's crying, crying so hard it makes her heart hurt, but it feels good all the same.

It feels like a real girl would.

)0(

The story would have you believe that they live happily ever after at this point; that the snake became a girl, and the lover a husband and that they lived in peaceful prosperity for all their days.

But that is untrue, or at least, true only in the way of myths and legends.

Still, the girl learned to live with the serpent and vice versa, and the lover continued to love, although in a quiet, slightly broken sort of way, and there was never truly peace, but there was joy in small moments, pleasure in hidden corners, and a world of sweet possibilities stolen, borrowed and earned.

 

Brighid 2006


End file.
